


dry veins; slick cherry streams; a boy left in ruins

by fyeahimking



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Blood, Blood and Gore, Depressing, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, anyway, but......, graphic depictions of blood, i write a lot of depressing shit sorry, just covering my bases, my other denbrough but mostly stan's mental capacity fic has a kinda happy ending sooooo, read that if you want, sorry for jumping on this bandwagon i had an idea the other day, this is Depressing with a capital d i dont blame you for thinking that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 08:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14076450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fyeahimking/pseuds/fyeahimking
Summary: He stands there for a moment with his palm on the gleaming doorhandle, smudging it with his sweaty fingerprints as he stares back at Stan's glassy eyes, pale pools of light brown with green specks that make Bill want to stay, that leave a voice urging him on,stay, stay, stay!He goes.





	dry veins; slick cherry streams; a boy left in ruins

The day they get the call to go back to Derry, Bill watches Stan shut down. 

His eyes shutter, his mouth tightens, his hands shake. Stan insists that he's alright, tells Bill that he just needs some time to adjust, to think this over and get used to the idea of going back there, of going back home. _It's okay_ , Stan says in that soft voice of his, the one that he normally uses to tell Bill that he loves him. He pushes Bill's leather satchel - freshly polished by Stan himself and holding a still-warm print of Bill's finished manuscript inside - onto Bill's shoulder, presses a kiss to Bill's cheek, and knots his arms around Bill's waist for a hug. He presses his face into Bill's chest and inhales deeply like he's trying to imprint the scent of Bill into his nose. 

It's barely a minute long, - honestly, it doesn't even feel like that - but Bill swears he can feel a kind of desperation in Stan's body, in the set of his arms around Bill's chest, in the tightness of his boyfriend's muscles, maybe something along the lines of _please don't make me go back there_ , but then Stan is pulling away and lightly shoving Bill toward the door. He stands there for a moment with his palm on the gleaming doorhandle, smudging it with his sweaty fingerprints as he stares back at Stan's glassy eyes, pale pools of light brown with green specks that make Bill want to stay, that leave a voice urging him on, _stay, stay, stay!_

He goes. 

He shouldn't have, but he did. He knew it was a mistake while he did it - felt his heart pounding, felt the sweat collecting at the back of his neck, felt the swirling of anxiety in his stomach. He knew it was a mistake while he did it, but that didn't stop him; he wanted to believe Stan, wanted Stan to know that he trusted him. 

He was stupid. 

He comes home six hours later and finds Stan dead in the bathtub. The handle to the front door is a shiny and golden again, the house a little too spotless, everything cleaned and put back in its place. Bill's house clothes are folded neatly on the bed for him to put on, his favorite vinyl under the needle of Stan's record player in the living room, dinner stacked in Tupperware next to the fridge, a plate made up for Bill in the microwave. 

There are no dirty dishes, no evidence that Stan ate the dinner that he'd cooked and Bill wonders if he'd had a last meal.

Stan didn't even lock the bathroom door, that's how sure he was that Bill wasn't going to come check on him. Bill wonders if Stan was happy or sad about that thought, about the idea that Bill had trusted him not to do this, wonders if he'd even considered that train of thought at all. He can't help thinking that he'd rather have a Stan that was angry that Bill didn't trust him than this - this _corpse_ that he still loves. 

Stan's wrists are a parade of deep, even slits. All of them are perfectly lined up and the exact same size. The water in the tub is pink and completely still. The thick lines down the side of the porcelain are a color red that Bill hasn't seen since he was a child - since a boy with a thing for poetry appeared with a letter carved in his stomach, since a red-headed firecracker of a girl talked about a bathroom soaked in the shade, since a rock war started in the saving act of a new friend, since the head of his best friend popped up from a rip in a mattress and thick cherry drooled across a rotted wood floor, since he opened a closet door to find half a missing girl strung up by her wrists, since he saw - since he _saw......_

He hasn't seen that color on Stan since - since he found him alone in a sewage tunnel, a deformed woman bent over him, feasting on his face. 

Bill looks at his face now and sees that Stan's eyes are glazed, trained on his right arm, and half-lidded, like he'd wanted to close them but hadn't wanted to miss anything either. His skin is as pale as normal, his cheeks slightly flushed, his mouth open just a sliver. 

When Bill looks down at his jaw, he realizes that Stan's scars are gone.

**Author's Note:**

> and the award for most times using the word 'since' in one piece goes to....
> 
> also i have a headcanon that everybody's wounds/scars/etc from during pennywise encounters disappear when they die - dont fight me on that please
> 
> https://stanleyisasoftboy.tumblr.com/
> 
> thanks for reading!! if you enjoyed, please consider buying me a coffee at the link below.
> 
> http://ko-fi.com/njames


End file.
